The 50 Best Britpop Albums

Blur, Suede, Elastica, Pulp, Oasis—here are the mis-shapes who made the scene great
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Illustrations by Jack Dylan

“‘Britpop?’ It’s just a shitty-sounding word,” Jarvis Cocker told Pitchfork this month. “I don’t like the nationalistic idea of it; it wasn't a flag-waving music. It was really distasteful when it got called ‘Britpop’ because that was like somebody trying to appropriate some kind of alternative culture, stick a Union Jack on it, and take the credit for it.”

But Britpop, by any other name, still would’ve been a phenomenon. Born in London in the early 1990s, in grimy pubs and bare flats, the scene offered a thrilling new soundtrack for young British life. Bands like Suede, Blur, Oasis, Elastica, and Cocker’s Pulp captured the charms and eccentricities of their country while also excising their frustrations with class and community, topping it all with a defiant, tongue-in-cheek glamour. Their guitar-heavy anthems drew from the rock of 1960s England along with the pulse of waning Madchester and alt-rock trends, exporting this exuberant sound to every corner of the globe. By the late ’90s, this once-scrappy scene was so culturally powerful, it inspired tabloid blood rivalries (Blur vs. Oasis) and was hijacked by politicians (Britpop’s star emissaries, including Cocker and Oasis’ Noel Gallagher, were invited to meet Prime Minister Tony Blair). The cultural flash faded around the turn of the millennium, but not before Britpop reinvigorated rock‘n’roll, moving its epicenter from American grunge back across the pond.

But more than geography and quick wit twines the Britpop scene together. With this list, we are defining Britpop as the musical scene active in the United Kingdom in the mid-’90s. Particularly, we are looking at the guitar-based musicians who shared focus on anthemic melodies, social observations of British culture and daily life, and their country’s musical heritage. Voters in this list come from the U.S., the UK, and Canada, and in the process of assembling it, we discovered that each location had a slightly different idea of what Britpop entailed; the final result represents the aggregate sensibility of its contributors. We’re not looking so much to progenitors (i.e. the Smiths, the Stone Roses), or alternative rock acts that followed (Coldplay, Kasabian), and location is also a factor—sorry, Anglophile rockers in the colonies.

But before we dive into all that, let’s choose life with the director of the film that, as much as anything, made the world fall in love with Britpop.


Mile End and Needle Drops: Danny Boyle on Britpop and the Music of Trainspotting
Pitchfork: Britpop was an important part of the Trainspotting soundtrack: Blur, Pulp, Sleeper, Elastica. What role did music play in creating that film in 1996—what were you listening to? What were you energized by?

Danny Boyle: Everything. It’s one of the things the film’s about, in a way. Music was an autonomic function for me. I just knew everything about music; I didn’t even think about it. And then you get older, there’s obviously a tipping point where you don’t know everything about music, and somebody mentions a band and you go, “What? Who?” That’s the tragedy of getting older, I suppose, for someone who was as obsessed with music as I was.

Initially, certainly with the first couple of my films, people regarded my use of music as non-classical filmmaking—even though people like Scorsese were doing it. There was outrage that I was cutting everything like MTV, like a kind of pop video. But actually, I loved pop videos. Adored them. Thought they were a breath of fresh air and a great cultural moment. And these characters, especially when you read the book, they are pop culture. It’s part of the architecture of their lives, like it is for so many of us.

The whole archaic notion of highbrow/lowbrow.

Right, all that. The heartbeat of the film was this Underworld album, dubnobasswithmyheadman... We used one track from that album and a new track that they put out as an unsuccessful single, “Born Slippy,” which I found in an HMV store.

At the time, although we weren’t as aware of it as you’re aware now, Britpop was happening. It’s been emulsified as an occasion, in retrospect. But at the time, it didn’t feel like it. I remember Jarvis Cocker and Damon Albarn coming in to watch a rough cut of the film. Damon wasn’t sure about it; he was worried about the drugs side of it. But Jarvis said to him, “Oh, no, it’s like, really cool, man,” and sent us a few songs.

Pulp’s “Mile End” was new for the soundtrack, right?

It was, and I lived in Mile End. It was unbelievable; it was like synchronicity. I mean, I still live there. The area's been gentrified a bit now, like so many places, but at the time it was pretty rough. I was so proud of that.

So Damon Albarn, who at times had a bit more of a party reputation than Jarvis Cocker, was the one who had reservations about the content?

I mean, it was very disturbing at the time to watch it, because obviously it was a celebration of youth, really, of that time of life, in all its recklessness and carelessness, and obviously when you bring heroin into that equation, it’s quite hardcore. But [Albarn] was great, and he gave us this song, and I remember him saying, “I haven’t got a title for it.” And I said, “Oh, there’s an amazing phrase in Irvine [Welsh]’s book where he calls heroin users ‘closet romantics.’” They’re romantic people the drug affects most terribly, and they’re often, in Irvine’s experience—certainly as it’s expressed through the book—those that can’t even acknowledge they are romantic. And it kind of seals their fate, really, for their life. And so he called it “Closet Romantic.”

When you fit music to film, sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t work. But it was weird—everything we did seemed to work then. Obviously the film was made in that spirit of a time in your life but in reality, the characters span an almost unnatural length of time as young men—because their references are actually punk, which is my era, and kind of Britpop, which is more like the actors’ era. And there’s like 15 years between us. They couldn’t really have gone to see Iggy [Pop] in concert. That’s an amazing scene in the book and it leads to the obsession with “Lust for Life.” So they couldn’t really span all of that time, but of course it’s a movie, so you can compress time, extract time, avoid it.

We didn’t use any score music at all; it’s all what they call “needle drops.” Even though it’s a very emotional rollercoaster, there's no manipulative music, no almost-invisible score music which you use to manipulate emotions. It’s all purposeful and highly presented in terms of volume. Nothing is floated in subliminally. Everything's like, “Ping!” Here’s the song. It’s just as important as the dialogue. It’s just as important as the characters.

Illustration by Jack Dylan
Were you going to a lot of shows when you were working on Trainspotting?

Yeah. Not so much now. It’s that same story. In the preparation for the new Trainspotting film, we did talk about repeating a scene that’s in the original book: They all go to an Iggy concert in Glasgow and Tommy, the character who dies, has a spiritual moment where Iggy looks at him from the stage and sings the line, “Scotland takes drugs in psychic defense” to him. And when we were talking to Iggy about using “Lust for Life” early on, I was telling him we might do a scene at one of his concerts and the guys would be older, going back, remembering one of their heroes who was still working. It didn’t work out, unfortunately, because he was in South America by the time we were shooting, but Iggy remembered the story from the book and he remembered that line. He had read the book. I mean, I was amazed.

Were you one of the ones who went to Glastonbury and saw Pulp’s iconic performance in ’95?

No, I never did that. I remember watching it live on the telly, saw “Common People.” That’s one of the great moments. Irvine sent me a link the other day saying what’s-his-name, Captain Kirk, had recorded “Common People.” William Shatner. Star Trek! He recorded “Common People”! He records all these songs apparently and they’re slightly jokey but quite good versions. So anyways, yeah, I’d seen Pulp at the Brixton Academy, probably before Glastonbury. I’ve never been to Glastonbury, but my daughters go.

Your song choice as director of the 2012 Summer Olympics’ opening ceremony was fascinating. “Song 2” was one of them.

That’s an amazing song. My argument in presenting the Olympics was: Listen, you want to talk about what we are good at? We were good at the Industrial Revolution. That was a long time ago. What are we good at now? Music. Culture. We’re really good at it. We should be prouder of it, spend more money on it, promote it more, educate kids more into it—that it’s theirs and that we’re good at it. Fuck’s sake.

I remember trying to fit “Wonderwall” in and I just couldn’t fit it in anywhere.

Speaking of Oasis, I read that you wanted Oasis in the original Trainspotting soundtrack but they took the title too literally and refused. Is that true?

I’ve heard that story as well, but I have no idea whether that’s true. It’s funny because obviously I remember promoting the first film, having to explain the title, especially in America because the word had no meaning at all. It was like a made-up word. Now there are so many more connections with geek culture—you know, internet obsessives. It just has so much more resonance.

Lastly: Oasis or Blur?

I knew you’d do that! Well I come from Manchester, you see. So that’s my answer.

Danny Boyle is the Academy Award-winning director of Trainspotting, Slumdog Millionaire, 28 Days Later..., and T2 Trainspotting, in theaters now.

Interview by Stacey Anderson


Boy’s Own

50.

Denim: Back in Denim (1992)

After the indie enigma Lawrence (born Lawrence Hayward) ended his project Felt in 1989, he made plans for a new band, a new decade and—this time, surely—imminent fame. His schemes were typically idiosyncratic. In 1990, as Lawrence’s indie peers turned onto dance music, betting his reputation on the guitar crunch of glam rock would have seemed perverse. But for once, Lawrence’s studio perfectionism brought him in sync with the times: Back in Denim came out at the end of 1992, at the start of Suede’s glam-driven rise. The 1970s, and its pop templates, had suddenly come in from the cold.

Back in Denim is more than just a nod to the 1970s: It’s a memoir of the decade as seen by a British kid (“The Osmonds”), an acting-out of boyhood superstar dreams (“Back in Denim”), and a pledge of devotion to better times (“I’m Against the Eighties”). Like most of Lawrence’s projects, it relies on his slightly nasal, flat-affect voice, which can be a hard taste to acquire. But this time, Lawrence is backed by the famed producer John Leckie (Public Image Limited, the Fall), which makes the stomping, platform-booted hooks sound authentically massive. In the end, Denim came no closer to the big time than Felt, but Lawrence’s tunnel-vision dreams of the 1970s and his unashamed pop aspirations helped light Britpop’s fuse. –Tom Ewing

Listen: Denim: “Back in Denim”


Mercury / Fontana

49.

James: Laid (1993)

In the early 1990s, even when whip-smart Britpop singles seemed to vie for national anthem status in the UK, they rarely got many spins on American radio. But when James released “Laid”—with its cross-dressing, therapist-referencing protagonist—one of Britain’s most intelligent bands finally broke through to the States. By then, they had been around for nearly a dozen years; they’d already toured with the Smiths, partied at the Hacienda, and had hits with the Madchester anthem “Come Home” and the poppy “Sit Down.”

Laid is emotionally ragged, earnest, and rife with dashed dreams of romantic and religious security. Tim Booth repeats lyrical phrases like meditative mantras, particularly with his cries of “Here they come again!” on “Out to Get You.” Producer Brian Eno gently but significantly expands the band’s textural palette, adding synthesizers and emphasizing reverbed slide guitar (the latter inspired by James' 1992 acoustic tour with Neil Young). James would never have a hit like “Laid” again, but crucially, they showed the value of reinvention to their tour openers that year: a young band called Radiohead. –Elia Einhorn

Listen: James: “Laid”


Fauve

48.

Echobelly: Everyone’s Got One (1994)

Led by Sonya Madan, Echobelly stood out in a scene largely comprised of white guys with guitars. She wasn’t the only female in Britpop, of course, nor was she the only singer of Indian descent (Cornershop was led by Tjinder Singh), but Madan was singular in her confidence: She seized guitar rock from the lads, molding it in the shape of her bold personality.

Madan was an acolyte of Morrissey, and a follower of his octave-leaping melodies and fey swoon, but on Everyone’s Got One, she’s not plagued with his self-doubt or irony. Look at the title: It reduces to an acronym of EGO, no coincidence for a band whose first hit single was “I Can’t Imagine the World Without Me.” Echobelly hit harder than the Smiths: Their guitars slice and roar, clearly indebted to the neo-glam explosions of Suede’s Bernard Butler. Furthermore, the tempo on Everyone’s Got One doesn’t slow until "Taste of You," the halfway point, which gives it a certain relentlessness; still, they flash a sentimental streak on "Insomniac," which pairs that thunder with vulnerability not heard much elsewhere. It’s a sly, affecting grace note on a record that captures the unbridled self-confidence of Britpop. –Stephen Thomas Erlewine

Listen: Echobelly: “I Can’t Imagine the World Without Me”


Elevator Music / Hut / Virgin

47.

Placebo: Without You I’m Nothing (1998)

Brian Molko is bad at a number of things. Chief among them: picking cover art, quoting Bob Dylan, and judging his own work. Upon the celebration of Placebo’s 20th anniversary, the frontman ranked his albums, a futile exercise for a band with only one standout—and he placed it sixth.

Without You I’m Nothing establishes, once and for all, everything Molko is good at: First and foremost, rhyming words with “weed” and making straight men ask themselves a lot of questions while watching the “Pure Morning” video. Placebo’s taste is impeccable here, cribbing Sonic Youth’s dissonant guitar squalor, block rockin’ beats, and a reverent take on David Bowie’s gender-bending queen bitch shtick that impressed the man enough to feature on a remix of the title track. But Molko’s genius lies in repackaging all that into pithy, pissy anthems for the sullen, sexually curious teens who were reflexively turned off by Britpop’s rigid heteronormativity, and whose access to pop culture only went as far as the mall or basic cable. Yeah, the Bowie cosign must’ve been nice, but the crucial placement of “Every You Every Me” in the Cruel Intentions soundtrack confirms Without You I’m Nothing’s true legacy as Britpop’s finest piece of late-’90s alterna-trash. –Ian Cohen

Listen: Placebo: “Every You Every Me”


Setanta

46.

The Divine Comedy: Casanova (1996)

If the central tension of Britpop was middle-class (Blur) vs working-class (Oasis), that left an obvious space for the upper class. Enter Neil Hannon, son of an Irish bishop, who takes wicked delight in playing the louche aristocrat throughout Casanova. His plummy tones, sprightly hooks, and appetite for pastiche means there’s something joyful in every track, even if there’s usually something preposterous, too.

This irrepressible bonhomie made Hannon a star, championed by the same tastemakers who’d embraced “lad culture” and Oasis. But maybe that wasn’t such an unlikely alliance: Casanova is an album about sex—or, rather, the pursuit and consequences of it—and underneath the jollity and artifice, darker notes sound. The wannabe pick-up artist of “Becoming More Like Alfie” and the jaded and jilted narrator of “The Frog Princess” are insecure and sour; the jokester of “Through a Long & Sleepless Night” brims with melodramatic venom, and Hannon never glosses over the grubby and dishonest aspects of male desire. The Scott Walker-influenced final track finds the once-great lover on his deathbed, alone save for his faithful horses and hounds: It’s grandiose and pompous but beautiful nonetheless, a fitting farewell for a deceptively high-spirited album. –Tom Ewing

Listen: The Divine Comedy: “Theme from Casanova”


Parlophone

45.

Mansun: Attack of the Grey Lantern (1997)

If Paul Draper had kept his nerve, Mansun’s debut album would’ve been a superhero origin story and the unlikely upstart that bested Be Here Now, Urban Hymns, OK Computer, and Ladies and Gentlemen We Are Floating in Space for the most grandiose British rock album of 1997. Instead, Draper admittedly "ran out of steam" and delivered “half a concept album—a con album," a sly acknowledgment of the pretentious trickery at the core of these projects. Though the inexplicably resequenced American version of Grey Lantern made any storyline a moot point, we’re lucky that “Dark Mavis,” “Stripper Vicar,” and “Egg Shaped Fred” aren’t plot points but rather pop songs on one of the most beguiling records to ever hit No. 1 in the UK. Glam, prog-rock, James Bond themes, record-scratch effects, Rule Britannia kitsch, a seven-minute interpolation of the Revolver song about taxes, a panoramic glam-folk single remixed by Paul Oakenfold when that sort of thing mattered—it's all here, and nothing else sounds like The Grey Lantern. –Ian Cohen

Listen: Mansun: “Wide Open Space”


Setanta

44.

Edwyn Collins: Gorgeous George (1994)

The most famous track on Edwyn Collins’ third album is his ingenious 1960s throwback “A Girl Like You,” one of the best singles of the Britpop era. Highlighted by the ex-Orange Juice frontman’s aloof, Bowie-esque croon and a recurring marimba lick played by Sex Pistols drummer Paul Cook, “A Girl Like You” became an unexpected hit after it appeared in the 1995 Gen-X comedy Empire Records. In the U.S., where “A Girl Like You” hit the Top 40, the song epitomized Britpop for many Americans; no song by Blur or Pulp ever charted so high stateside.

However, anyone who sought out more tunes like “A Girl Like You” on Gorgeous George was bound to be disappointed: The rest of the LP is quieter, predominantly acoustic, and slyly sardonic. An important figure in European post-punk, Collins never set out to be a pop star. On songs like “The Campaign for Real Rock” and “North of Heaven”—the latter of which includes a then-timely dig at Guns N’ Roses—Collins is content to be the clever outsider. But “A Girl Like You” put Collins in the mainstream by exporting a familiar British commodity: timeless, James Bond-style cool. –Steven Hyden

Listen: Edwyn Collins: “A Girl Like You”


Blanco y Negro

43.

Catatonia: International Velvet (1998)

Catatonia frontwoman Cerys Matthews made headlines for boasting that International Velvet’s lead single, “Mulder and Scully,” was better than Oasis’ single “All Around the World.” Their “X-Files” reference was a gamble—nostalgic at the time, with Matthews wrapping her thick Welsh accent around those sci-fi detectives—and it pushed the band to the top five of the UK album charts. It was an able representation of their second album, who reference cultural trivia throughout: “I Am the Mob” winks at The Godfather, and “Road Rage” was inspired by an infamous 1996 murder case in which the victim was stabbed by his fiancée, who claimed the attack came from a stranger.

The singles stalked the charts and cushioned Catatonia in the bosom of mainstream radio, their insatiable pop choruses still standing up as some of Britpop’s most immediate. The album has much more diversity to offer, too, from the downbeat intimacy of “Why I Can’t Stand One Night Stands” to the trippy beats of “Goldfish and Paracetamol.” Also notable: The confidence of the UK music industry was such in 1998 that the title track was sung in Welsh, rendering “International Velvet” Wales’ unofficial anthem. –Eve Barlow

Listen: Catatonia: “Mulder and Scully”


MCA

42.

Ocean Colour Scene: Moseley Shoals (1996)

In 1996, the opening bars of Moseley Shoals were used to introduce guests on the British TV show “TFI Friday,” the place where Britpop’s finest characters were blasted into the homes of the public. There was no greater rubber stamp to secure this Birmingham quartet’s place among Britpop’s finest, and it was a significant feat for a band who rose up via Madchester, only to be too late to catch that wave with their 1992 debut. Soon enough, though, scene kingpins Noel Gallagher and Paul Weller were singing OCS’s praises, teeing up an audience for the group’s newly looser, R&B-inspired jams.

Front-loaded with singalong staples such as “The Riverboat Song” and “The Day We Caught the Train,” Moseley Shoals moseyed its way onto indie dance floors and remains there to this day. During the summer of its release, workmanlike bands inspired by Northern soul and ’60s throwback were inescapable. Despite the fact Ocean Colour Scene remained brutally uncool, not least from their unwavering lack of pretense, they represented the art of big-hearted, blue-eyed rock’n’soul at a time when Britpop was becoming flashy and bombastic. –Eve Barlow

Listen: Ocean Colour Scene: “The Day We Caught the Train”


Gut

41.

Space: Spiders (1996)

Often enough, bands throw everything but the kitchen sink into their debut albums to see what sticks. That's certainly true of Spiders, which contains rock (“Me & You Vs the World”), funk (“Voodoo Roller”), trip-hop (“Money”), and a trumpet solo (“Dark Clouds”). The album was almost too smart for its own good, and served proof that Britpop bands could—and arguably should—defy the retrogazing that was suddenly so trendy.

Even within songs, Space’s genre-bending makes it impossible to define the foursome's sound, which comes across as psychedelic as Happy Mondays yet equally inspired by Cypress Hill and Ibiza nightlife. Recorded in Liverpool, Spiders was released via Gut Records, renowned for bold, unpredictable chart hits like Right Said Fred’s “I'm Too Sexy.” Employing the production clout of Nick Coler, who was integral to the KLF's style, these tracks are madcap narratives born from lyricist Tommy Scott's obsession with films, and the hilarious images have more in common with horror B-movies than anything that happened in Britain in 1996. For a band who looked to have their tongues firmly in cheek, they paved their own seriously inventive road. –Eve Barlow

Listen: Space: “Me & You Vs the World”


Creation

40.

The Boo Radleys: Giant Steps (1993)

In 1993, the Boo Radleys were brimming with so much brazen creativity that not only could they steal their third album’s title from John Coltrane, they could live up to its next-level promise. Just as Britpop was coalescing as a movement, the Merseyside band was already waging a sonic assault on the scene’s retrograde sensibilities. Like many of their contemporaries, the Boos were devout students of the Beatles but, as adept as they were at ’60s psych-pop simulacrums, they were more interested in applying the anything-goes experimentalism of the post-Sgt. Pepper era to dub, free jazz, orchestral soundtracks, and other crate-digging concerns. The band’s formative shoegaze remains, but here it serves as the fabric that holds these disparate sounds together.

On Giant Steps, it feels like the ground will drop out from underneath at any moment. Pensive harpsichord ballads erupt into symphonic cacophony (“Thinking of Ways”); breezy, flute-trilled, jangle-folk serenades are ravaged by swirling, tape-loop tornadoes (“Barney (...and Me)”). Aquatic reggae ripples into a tsunami of brassy pop grandeur (“Lazarus”). But the combination of guitarist/chief songwriter Martin Carr’s masterful melodicism and singer Simon “Sice” Rowbottom’s choir-boy croon keeps you floating safely throughout. Alas, Giant Steps would amount to just a tiptoe into the U.S. market for the Boos. That year, the band would get more stateside exposure for covering “There She Goes” by the La’s on the So I Married an Axe Murderer soundtrack—a faithful facsimile that, sadly, misrepresented a band who sought to change the shape of Britpop to come. –Stuart Berman

Listen: The Boo Radleys: “Thinking of Ways”


Creation

39.

Super Furry Animals: Radiator (1997)

It’s a testament to the amount of blow being hoovered at Creation Records in the mid-’90s that, at one point, a band who released an EP titled Llanfairpwllgwngyllgogerychwyndrobwllantysiliogogogochynygofod (In Space) was bandied around as the next Oasis. And for a moment, Super Furry Animals seemed amenable to being Britpop by association, loading up their 1996 debut Fuzzy Logic with mad-for-it anthems that drew on genre-mandated proportions of ’60s psych and ’70s glam. But on their second album, Radiator, the band took the first exit ramp they could out of the Britpop rat race and began burrowing their singular path forward.

While Radiator continued the melodic immediacy of its predecessor, it also established the fusion of guitar rock and electronic sonics that would become the band’s standby. The album also provided the first real evidence that Gruff Rhys’ charismatic croon was well suited to both wacky and weighty material: For every comical fuzz-punk rave-up about mythical bloodsucking monster-bats (“Chupacabras”), there was a rueful folky-Dory rumination on more existential evils (“Demons”). The band’s great progress can be most accurately gauged by the closer, “Mountain People”: What begins as a formal, Ray Davies-esque exercise in social observation gradually builds into a volcanic expulsion of squelching, thumping techno. And after conquering that fiery peak, Super Furriy Animals never looked back. –Stuart Berman

Listen: Super Furry Animals: “Mountain People”


Hut

38.

McAlmont & Butler: The Sound of… McAlmont & Butler (1995)

Bernard Butler’s last year with Suede was not a happy one, so it wasn’t a surprise when he left the band as they were completing their second album, Dog Man Star. Freed to pursue his lavish visions, Butler teamed with former Thieves singer David McAlmont on an album that functions as a riposte to the towering darkness of Suede’s sophomore record. Bright and bold, with an unapologetic debt to lush 1960s pop, The Sound ofMcAlmont & Butler is both an album of its time and somewhat out of step with it.

Much of this is due to the pair’s idiosyncrasies. McAlmont isn’t a soul singer, per se—he’s a cross between Terence Trent D’Arby and Glenn Tilbrook, a powerhouse with pop mannerisms. This suits a record that swings like the ’60s but is undergirded by a sense of New Wave songcraft: "What’s the Excuse This Time?" feels like a splice of Squeeze and Prince. McAlmont may be the frontman, but there is no doubt that this is Butler’s album: The Sound airs out his prog inclinations, with "You Do" running seven-and-a-half minutes as it becomes thoroughly intoxicated on its own swirls of strings and guitars. It’s a celebration of sound that exudes exuberance, a swagger that’s right in line with the heady indulgence of Cool Britannia. –Stephen Thomas Erlewine

Listen: McAlmont & Butler: “You Do”


Indolent

37.

Sleeper: The It Girl (1996)

The It Girl launches with a clanging, slightly acidic chord that lands brusquely and takes its sweet time to dissipate—an assertive burst à la George Harrison’s kick into “A Hard Day’s Night.” But Sleeper’s second album is more than the retro ’60s photocopy favored by so many of their Britpop peers; it’s guileless in its bounce-along blend of skiffle guitar, riot-grrrl crackle, and jazzy basslines. There’s even a bit of the Clash’s punk-reggae furor on “Sale of the Century,” a glimpse at Sleeper frontwoman Louise Wener’s well-earned frustration: the glamorous singer was a lightning rod for sexist criticism, her light croon regularly maligned in fetid live reviews. The lads of Trainspotting didn’t shrink from Sleeper’s charms, though, when the band’s cover of Blondie’s “Atomic” nearly stole the show on that film’s iconic soundtrack. –Stacey Anderson

Listen: Sleeper: “Statuesque”


Creation

36.

Teenage Fanclub: Grand Prix (1995)

“I don’t need an attitude,” sings Raymond McGinley on “Verisimilitude.” “Rebellion is a platitude/I only hope the verse is good.” By shedding the flannel and feedback of 1991’s Bandwagonesque and aspiring instead to power-pop perfection, Teenage Fanclub practically guaranteed that they would be underrated. In a notorious essay pitting them against Suicide, Nick Hornby framed the Scottish band as the acme of amiable middlebrow songcraft—a sincere compliment that sounded like faint praise.

Still, what songs they are. Despite their unwaveringly American influences (the Byrds, Big Star), good timing brought Teenage Fanclub into alignment with Britpop at the precise moment that their musical chemistry peaked. (Liam Gallagher called them “the second best band in the world.”) McGinley, Gerard Love, and the endlessly melancholy Norman Blake are so evenly matched here that Grand Prix plays like a singles collection, every jingle-jangle riff and bittersweet harmony a delight. Ain’t that enough? –Dorian Lynskey

Listen: Teenage Fanclub: “Sparky’s Dream”


Radioactive

35.

Black Grape: It’s Great When You’re Straight...Yeah (1995)

Britpop successes are stories of improbable survival: Maybe you weathered a ruthless tide of hype cycles, or transcended an imploding scene, or perhaps you just stayed together long enough to finally hit it big. Shit, maybe you just didn’t die. Shaun Ryder, of the Happy Mondays and later of Black Grape, can say all of this and more, and It’s Great When You're Straight...Yeah is a jubilant survival song.

With the Happy Mondays, Ryder basically invented the deliriously debauched Madchester scene, and nearly killed himself a million times over in the process, but he didn’t make his masterpiece until he cleaned up (for the first time, anyway). It’s Great When You're Straight...Yeah is the moment, post-rehab and recovery, when parties start being fun again. The music—a fat, blocky, honking mix of horns, drum loops, and Ryder’s exuberant shouts—feels livelier and looser and more joyously warped than the Mondays ever did. And they are funnier: On "Kelly’s Heroes," Ryder lampoons the hero worship of the scene he spawned, and "Tramazi Parti" is a piss-take at the idea that taking lots of drugs could be fun in the first place. –Jayson Greene

Listen: Black Grape: “Tramazi Parti”


Infectious / Home Grown

34.

Ash: 1977 (1996)

Ash seemed to want nothing to do with the Beatles/Kinks axis that dominated Britpop, instead mining the puppyish aggression and buzzsaw melody of the Undertones, their Northern Irish antecedents. Ash barely sounded like Britpop but sat neatly in a post-Pixies UK indie scene, as in love with Veruca Salt’s “Seether” as they were the Bluetones. (Football had their hearts, too: The cover of 1977’s calling card single, “Kung Fu,” depicts Manchester United star Eric Cantona executing a mid-match flying kick on a rival team supporter.)

Ash’s reputation ultimately hinged on a brace of singles, “Girl From Mars” and “Angel Interceptor,” which provided a neater encapsulation of teen infatuation than any other Britpop act could. It didn’t hurt that Ash were young—Tim Wheeler and Mark Hamilton were still just 18 when those songs charted. If the mid-tempo hits “Goldfinger” and “Oh Yeah” sound like a dressing-up box raid on Suede and Oasis (with whom they share a producer in Owen Morris), and deeper cuts betray a Gallagher plod, the band channel their youthful vim to spend the last five minutes of the album (“Sick Party”) violently throwing up. –Laura Snapes

Listen: Ash: “Girl From Mars”


Chrysalis

33.

Black Box Recorder: England Made Me (1998)

After he unwittingly helped invent Britpop with the Auteurs and retold terrorist history on Baader Meinhof, a solo concept album about Germany’s radical leftist Red Army Faction, the sui generis indie gadfly Luke Haines formed what was intended to be a duo with ex-Jesus & Mary Chain drummer John Moore. But when Black Box Recorder wrote their chilling first song, “Girl Singing in the Wreckage,” about a teen mom and her baby stumbling through the debris of a plane crash, they realized it required a female vocalist. Enter Sarah Nixey, an ingénue whose icy whisper could telegraph posh boredom just as convincingly as twisted sensuality. In his memoir Bad Vibes, Haines calls her “our Trojan horse.”

Not that Black Box Recorder’s entry into the pop mainstream, with their debut album England Made Me, went so smoothly. Banned from radio for its deadpan chorus, “Life is unfair/Kill yourself or get over it,” the listless single “Child Psychology” embodies all that is unsettling about this quintessentially English release. An anthology of childhood vignettes and suburban tableaux laced with casual cruelty, the album cuts deepest when it goes quiet and introspective. Moore’s twinkling percussion situates Nixey’s damaged narrators inside a bleak dollhouse caked in the dust of memory; each track is a miniature chamber of horrors. –Judy Berman

Listen: Black Box Recorder: “Child Psychology”


Epic

32.

Manic Street Preachers: Everything Must Go (1996)

Speaking in a new UK TV documentary about the Manics’ career-defining fourth album, bassist and lyricist Nicky Wire doesn’t mince words: “I fucking hated Britpop.” Specifically, it was the patronizing depiction of the working classes by the likes of Blur that most galled Wire. It prompted the dignified rejoinder of “A Design for Life,” an anthem that breathed hope into a band otherwise poleaxed by grief after the 1995 disappearance/presumed death of Wire’s best friend, guitarist Richey Edwards.

With Everything Must Go, the Manics turned that grief into mourning glory, a sneaky blend of commercial power-pop hiding lethal lyrical cluster-bombs about the suicidal photojournalist “Kevin Carter,” the Alzheimer’s-debilitated artist Willem de Kooning (“Interiors”), and the unbearable suffering of animals in captivity (“Small Black Flowers That Grow in the Sky,” one of several posthumous Edwards lyrics on the album). Released into Britpop’s mainstream critical mass, the album went triple platinum, elevating the Welsh “culture sluts” to the UK arena circuit to peddle their sweet pain to tens of thousands. A vindication for the remaining trio, yet in Richey’s phantom presence, Everything Must Go remains a four-man masterpiece. –Simon Goddard

Listen: Manic Street Preachers: “A Design for Life”


Heavenly

31.

Saint Etienne: Foxbase Alpha (1991)

An album whose biggest hit transposes a Neil Young song into dub reggae (“Only Love Can Break Your Heart”) couldn’t be accused of parochialism. Still, despite its breadth of reference, Saint Etienne’s collage-like debut reads overwhelmingly as a love letter to the capital, rebooting the myth of Swinging London for the sample-happy 1990s. Bob Stanley and Pete Wiggs, two pop obsessives from suburban Croydon, were new to both the city and music-making, so Foxbase Alpha (named after an imaginary idyll they joked about as teenagers) has the quality of a dream taking shape, with singer Sarah Cracknell their new best friend and airy muse. “Girl VII” renders stops on the city’s tube network as glamorous as São Paolo and Valencia, while “London Belongs to Me” depicts Camden, soon to become Britpop’s grimy hub, as a hazy utopia where summer and youth are eternal. –Dorian Lynskey

Listen: Saint Etienne:“Only Love Can Break Your Heart”


Nude

30.

Suede: Sci-Fi Lullabies (1997)

Put two Britpop fans of a certain age together and the conversation will turn quickly to CD singles. Often released in multiple versions to juice the lead track’s UK chart position, the CD single was a taxing format for artists, now on the hook for producing essentially twice as many B-sides. For some, that meant commissioning extra remixes or live tracks. But a few 1990s artists, including Suede, took cues from 1980s favorites like the Smiths and the Jam, treating B-sides with the same quality control as any other release.

Suede managed to keep up both the pace and high bar of their B-sides over the first half-decade of their career, as evidenced by Sci-Fi Lullabies. At 27 tracks, it’s nearly the output of their three studio albums released over the same time period, and an exquisite set of aching, melancholy ballads (“The Big Time,” “High Rising") and sure-footed midtempo tracks (“To the Birds,” "My Insatiable One”). Overflowing with focused ideas, these tracks are neither the discard pile nor experiments or detours. The bassist doesn’t get to sing lead. There’s no drum-’n’-bass track. It’s just Suede doing Suede things— widescreen drama, kitchen-sink glamour—while carrying the torch of the great British single. –Scott Plagenhoef

Listen: Suede: “My Insatiable One”


Beggars Banquet

29.

The Charlatans: Tellin’ Stories (1997)

One of Britpop’s greatest triumphs, born from one of its greatest tragedies. In 1995, when their eponymous fourth album entered the UK charts at No. 1, the Charlatans proved themselves the tortoise to the Stone Roses’ hare as the last men standing of early-1990s Madchester. In the summer of ‘96, they began its follow-up in giddy spirits, nailing the Top 10 bangers “One to Another,” “North Country Boy,” and “How High” in a single session. Then, three weeks before they were due to play their biggest show yet, supporting Oasis at Knebworth, keyboard player Rob Collins was killed while racing his car from a pub to the studio.

The intended victory lap, Tellin’ Stories, instead became Collins’ wake, lacquering the album and its emotive title track in particular with a poignancy otherwise at odds with the prevailing euphoria. Completed with Primal Scream’s Martin Duffy filling in the gaps, Collins was respectfully given the last word with the closing instrumental, “Rob’s Theme.” That this remains the Charlatans’ biggest-selling and best-loved album is tribute enough to him. –Simon Goddard

Listen: The Charlatans: “Tellin' Stories”


Parlophone

28.

Morrissey: Vauxhall and I (1994)

Once upon a stage in 1992, Morrissey draped himself in the Union Jack, a flag long sequestered by far-right nutjobs, prompting many an irate liberal to speculate on whether the former Smith harbored imminent plans to invade Poland. Dodging these slings and arrows, he instead retreated to a haunted manor studio in Oxfordshire, cocooned in Brighton Rock, Oliver Twist, and a 1950s documentary on Lambeth scamps, subsisting on an alleged diet of “pea parcels.” When he re-emerged in 1994, it was with his fourth—and, to date, best—solo album.

Vauxhall and I is Morrissey’s “My Way”: wistful (“Now My Heart Is Full,” “Hold On to Your Friends”), touchingly thin-skinned (“I Am Hated for Loving”), and aggressively unapologetic (the chainsaw-revving “Speedway”). But above all else, it’s a musically elegant, lyrically eloquent defense plea that tells his detractors to kindly sod off. The public concurred, returning Morrissey to the UK No. 1 spot just as Britpop boomed and, before anyone had the chance to offer him an overdue “Sorry, Steven,” the Union Jack was suddenly everywhere, from Noel’s guitar to Ginger’s cleavage. Alas, with typically ill Morrissey fortune, all too soon he was writing rotten songs about window cleaners and being ritually crucified by the press once more. As you were, Britannia. –Simon Goddard

Listen: Morrissey: “Speedway”


Creation

27.

Super Furry Animals: Fuzzy Logic (1996)

Like their Welsh peers the Manic Street Preachers, Super Furry Animals hated Britpop’s parochialism. Nevertheless, as Creation labelmates of Oasis, they were welcomed to the mid-’90s party, mischievously spiking the drinks with their psychedelic punk-pop. In Gruff Rhys, they boasted a singer equal parts Syd Barrett and Noggin the Nog, the perfect mouthpiece for a debut comprised of songs about UFO abductees (“Hometown Unicorn”), guitarist Huw Bunford’s hamster (“Fuzzy Birds”), George Foreman (“Something for the Weekend”) and “Hangin’ With Howard Marks,” an ode to the Welsh cannabis smuggler as featured on the album sleeve. A bit like a “Sgt Pepper’s Homely Welsh Punk Band,” Fuzzy Logic is bong-smoke bonkers but also beautiful—not least during “If You Don’t Want Me to Destroy You,” its eco-friendly fourth single, for which Creation granted them a £2000 promotional budget. Being Celtic space cadets, they naturally opted to blow the lot on a tank, paint it blue, and turn it into a mobile techno sound system. With fittingly fuzzy logic, they’d later sell the tank to Don Henley of the Eagles. –Simon Goddard

Listen: Super Furry Animals: “If You Don’t Want Me to Destroy You”


Virgin / Hut

26.

The Verve: A Northern Soul (1995)

The Verve’s second album is a transitional work between the zonked-out psychedelia of 1993’s A Storm in Heaven and the epic balladry of the band’s most commercially successful LP, 1997’s Urban Hymns. That’s not a dig—if anything, A Northern Soul is a happy medium for the Verve, showcasing the band’s rocking and emotive sides with equal fervor.

On one hand, A Northern Soul refines the guitar freakouts from the group’s debut, with songs like “A New Decade” and the title track embracing a spacey grandeur more akin to Pink Floyd than the punchiness of Britpop. This aspect of the Verve always put them out of step with their contemporaries, which might explain why they came to rely upon sweeping anthems by the time of Urban Hymns. On A Northern Soul, the Verve honed their formula on the luminous love song “On Your Own” and the breathtaking chamber ballad “History”—just in time to deploy “Bitter Sweet Symphony” a few years later. –Steven Hyden

Listen: The Verve: “History”


Too Pure

25.

Hefner: Breaking God’s Heart (1998)

As the 1990s petered out and Britpop increasingly became the sound of post-Oasis knuckle-draggers, Hefner hit reset and helped carve out a corner of UK guitar music more indebted to its indie, shaggy-dog roots. Embraced by UK radio god John Peel while their contemporaries were appearing on Jools Holland’s mainstream TV show, Hefner were proud outsiders, spinning bedsit tales of librarians and the boys with nail-bitten fingers who wooed them.

Hefner’s style was ramshackle throughout—veering from jangly, nervy uptempo guitar pop à la Violent Femmes to patient, loose balladry—and it’s Darren Hayman’s lovelorn lyrics that unite. On the band’s debut album, Breaking God’s Heart, Hayman examines the social and emotional equity of love and lust from every angle, cataloging seemingly quotidian sexual encounters for those who don’t actually experience them with regularity. Crucially, Hayman doesn’t slide into fantasy or role-playing the way geek-chic hero Jarvis Cocker did so effectively in Pulp. Instead, Hayman remains squarely in the common people camp, weighing the relative values of sex and romance, human connection, and heartache for people who have nothing else to do but dance and drink and screw. –Scott Plagenhoef

Listen: Hefner: “The Sweetness Lies Within”


Parlophone

24.

Supergrass: In It for the Money (1997)

The video for Supergrass’ “Late in the Day” begins in stark black-and-white with frontman Gaz Coombes strumming away on an acoustic guitar, smoke trailing up from an ashtray on the arm of a lonely couch. It’s all very art-house, very serious-singer-songwriter—very reminiscent of the “Wonderwall” video. But then a pogo stick is thrown into Coombes’ hands and the trio head out into the streets, bopping through rain and over a car, showing off some neat one-legged stunts along the way. The clip is a winking fake-out from the Oxford group’s second album that highlights the most crucial part of their character: fun. Even when Coombes is singing about missing his girlfriend on tour or the treacherousness of burgeoning stardom, there’s always a Memphis horn blast, a McCartney-cute organ solo, a Townshend-whirling power chord, or a slinked-out Stones groove to keep things light, quick, and urgent. It’s only rock‘n’roll, and Supergrass never let you forget it. –Ryan Dombal

Listen: Supergrass: “Late in the Day”


EMI

23.

Kenickie: At the Club (1997)

Within Britpop’s tacky class-war narrative, few bands took the high ground. “Blur vs. Oasis” was the lightning rod, but the era was aflood with performative stereotype fulfillment, enabling the media to paint an uncouth proletariat at war with the arty middle class. Kenickie were one group to fashion an antidote. Like Pulp, the Sunderland four-piece spoke to a working class for whom glamorizing bleak Britannia was not a matter of sport but survival. Their synth-dappled guitar-pop was deceptively vulnerable, a strange cocktail of elation and deflation; amid tributes to boozy weekend bacchanals were reflections on women’s desires and anxieties. Their songwriting sketched an alternative to girl power’s individualist rush: Instead of assuming an audience with the tools to empower itself, Kenickie showed hedonism to be a release valve, something fought for and snatched from the daily grind on scrappy nights out. A proper breakout hit never materialized, and their refusal to capitulate to the Britpop era’s narrowing definition of counterculture might be why. In the eyes of their sizeable cult, it’s also the key to their immortality. –Jazz Monroe

Listen: Kenickie: “Acetone”


Heavenly

22.

Saint Etienne: So Tough (1993)

On So Tough, Saint Etienne conjure an ideal London, a place strung together with snippets of British movies and journalistic chatter, full of collective possibility. The opener “Mario’s Cafe” might be pop’s most blissful song about the buzz of simply hanging out with people you like, and the jaunty single “You’re in a Bad Way” is a comforting arm around a mournful shoulder. That track’s bubblegum sound reaches backwards, but So Tough is mostly a modernist, outward-looking record—where pop, dub, and house jams mingle with ballads you might find in the world-weary songbooks of European crooners. The latter work particularly well: The regal sweep of So Tough's most ambitious song, “Avenue,” and the poised sorrow of its finest one, “Hobart Paving,” showcase Sarah Cracknell’s pristine voice against their plush arrangements. Saint Etienne were part of a friendly assortment of imaginative groups, a proto-Britpop scene that also included Denim and the Auteurs; by the time it had hardened into the real thing, they felt alienated. So Tough stands as a snapshot of the Britpop that almost was: more cosmopolitan, more comfortable with the rest of the 1990s, and considerably more chic. –Tom Ewing

Listen: Saint Etienne: “Hobart Paving”


Costermonger

21.

Gene: Olympian (1995)

Many Britpop bands looked back to the 1960s, but Gene were different: The Smiths were their ground zero. If seen from a certain angle, they could be perceived as a parody act. Sonic allusions run rampant on their debut, Olympian—Martin Rossiter sighs like Morrissey, “Haunted by You” opens with a ringing inversion of “This Charming Man”—but Gene also followed the Smiths’ blueprint more subtly, taking stills of films for their cover art and releasing their own Hatful of Hollow grab-bag of B-sides and live cuts the year after Olympian. All these Mancunian affectations from a group of Londoners are endearing because they're not calculating; this is a band that felt the love so deeply, it infused every portion of their music.

Olympian functioned as a slightly melancholic tonic to the arrogance sweeping Britpop during the spring of 1995. Certainly, Rossiter and his mates also had self-confidence—and they were tougher than the Smiths, showing some measure of debt to Suede’s gnarly glam noise revival—but the tenor of Olympian is strikingly different than, say, Definitely Maybe. If Oasis wanted to get out of that dirty bedroom, Gene was happy to dwell within it, wish the world would slow down, and wallow within their dashed dreams. –Stephen Thomas Erlewine

Listen: Gene: “Haunted By You”


Hut

20.

The Auteurs: New Wave (1993)

Although Luke Haines would probably hate you for saying it, the Auteurs were very much the thinking person’s Britpop act, a band whose songs spoke of failure, faded glamour, and the intellectual seediness of bedsit life rather than living forever and very big houses in the country. A strangely wistful yet venomous tone pervades the Auteurs’ debut album, New Wave, as if Haines doesn’t know whether to seduce his listeners or punch them in the mouths. The 12 songs are defiant and melancholy, Haines’ hungover croon draping over lovelorn guitar lines, simple percussion, and sporadic piano, offset at times by the addition of a cello. It’s sparse yet effective, with the Beatles and the Go-Betweens as clear touchpoints. Later, Haines revealed Nirvana’s influence, too—and if you squint a little, songs like “Bailed Out” and “Junk Shop Clothes” are not so many miles from the quiet emotional intensity of their “MTV Unplugged,” although Kurt Cobain would never write lyrics as deflating and witty as Haines’ scorching put-downs. –Ben Cardew

Listen: The Auteurs: “Junk Shop Clothes”


4AD

19.

Lush: Lovelife (1996)

With their third full-length album, the 4AD dreamers Lush dropped out of the shoegaze cocoon and hit the ground running. The reinvention succeeded, partly because the pivot to Anglocentric guitar pop was performed with the conviction of born extroverts. Their chatty early single “Ladykillers” gleefully savages hapless suitors’ pick-up games: A preening ladies’ man, a peacocking male feminist, and “school of charm” connoisseurs everywhere wither under Miki Berenyi’s been-there-done-that snarl. The subtext of songs like “Ciao!”—in which Jarvis Cocker spars suavely with Berenyi in a game of post-breakup oneupmanship—was that Lush were dealing Britpop the feminist counterpoint it sorely needed. The message prevailed in part because they didn’t reject the escapist thrills of sex and booze (this was, after all, the 1990s) but instead delivered righteous barbs with the joyful arrogance of snarky pub chat between mates. –Jazz Monroe

Listen: Lush: “Ladykillers”


Food

18.

Blur: Modern Life Is Rubbish (1993)

Blur were most definitely “holding on for tomorrow” while putting together their second album. Their debut, 1991’s Leisure, left them on the wrong side of the dwindling Madchester trend, while mismanagement meant they ended up in the financial hole. They hit the States for a long, drunken tour in 1992, looking to settle their debts, but came back disenfranchised with the growing American influence on British culture (shameless capitalism chief among it). Damon Albarn and co. took it upon themselves to remind the UK of its roots, looking to classically British songwriters like Ray Davies, David Bowie, and Paul Weller while crafting the rock‘n’roll jangle that set the tone for Britpop.

In his songs, mostly set around London, Albarn walks a fine line between completely jaded and vaguely hopeful, with no tune capturing this feeling better than lead single “For Tomorrow.” Albarn wrote the song on Christmas Day after Blur’s label demanded a hit, not seeing yet that they had tapped into the next big thing by topping retro English rock with the cynicism that would come to define Gen-X. Atop elegant strings, Graham Coxon’s rough-edged guitar riffs, and a patchwork of vocal harmonies, the then-25-year-old Albarn shares what he knows about the world: It kind of sucks, but what’s the alternative besides moving forward? Needless to say, things got a bit better for Blur from there. –Jillian Mapes

Listen: Blur: “For Tomorrow”


Food

17.

Shampoo: We Are Shampoo (1994)

On their exhilaratingly bratty first album, Shampoo fused Britpop, teen pop, and riot grrrl—and the association horrified feminist punks, who dismissed them as a patriarchal product. It wasn’t an entirely fair criticism. Teenage best friends Jacqui Blake and Carrie Askew might’ve projected calculated vapidity in interviews (Melody Maker introduced them as “two alien teen snitches/queen bitches from Planet Peroxide”), but the duo didn’t meet in a boardroom. As the designated weirdos of their suburban high school, they’d co-authored a Manic Street Preachers fanzine before forming a band of their own.

We Are Shampoo contains precisely the kind of music you’d expect from teen girls who bonded over dissident rock. Layering sugary hooks atop cartoonish AC/DC riffs, they ethered “saddo” dudes, gamers, and the “dirty old love songs” of Whitney and Mariah. Their anti-manifesto “Viva La Megababes” taunted rivals, “Hippie chicks are sad, and supermodels suck/Riot grrrls, diet girls, who really gives a fuck?” Not even their shouty juvenile delinquency jam “Trouble,” a hit in the UK, could bring them stateside stardom, despite placement on such youth-friendly movie soundtracks as Mighty Morphin Power Rangers and Foxfire. But it didn’t take long for their influence to go global in the form of another British act whose suspiciously familiar brand of impish pop feminism really was a corporate invention. –Judy Berman

Listen: Shampoo: “Viva La Megababes”


His Master’s Voice

16.

Morrissey: Your Arsenal (1992)

By 1992, the blouse-wearing, flower-wielding Morrissey had beefed up both his look and sound. Newfound collaborators Alain Whyte and Boz Boorer came from the rockabilly scene; with cigarettes rolled firmly in sleeve, they brought a swagger that had eluded the ex-Smiths frontman’s previous solo releases, the mercurial Viva Hate and the dismal Kill Uncle. Bowie’s most valuable Spider From Mars, Mick Ronson, helmed production duties, bringing a powerful glam stomp. For the first time in half a decade, Moz had an unstoppable team and unstoppable songs.

Your Arsenal found Morrissey throwing two fingers to his haters, lamenting assorted personal and societal failings, and dissecting the newly post-Thatcher working class identity with gusto. He vacillated between condemnation and an uncharacteristic cautious optimism as his band matched him mood-for-mood, tough as a Millwall brick one moment and then heartbreakingly tender the next. And as he examined English identity via the common people and embraced his fellow drowners in a sea of swimmers, some might say that Morrissey handed the blueprints of Britpop to the next generation. –Elia Einhorn

Listen: Morrissey: “Tomorrow”


Wiiija

15.

Cornershop: When I Was Born for the 7th Time (1997)

Part of the fun of the Britpop years was seeing bands rocket from the most obscure crannies of indie to the top of the charts. That one of them was Cornershop, riot grrrl allies who found initial fame by burning a picture of Morrissey outside his label HQ, still seems like a pinch-yourself moment.

Cornershop’s third album, When I Was Born for the 7th Time, shows they deserved their fabulously unlikely slice of stardom. It’s the most affable of records, a loose collection of indie-funk jams with vocalist and songwriter Tjinder Singh threading deadpan wisdom between the beats. Scratch the easygoing surface and there’s invention at every turn, from “Funky Days Are Back Again”’s frazzled electro backing to Singh playing the heel on “Good to Be on the Road Back Home Again,” an oddball country duet with Tarnation’s Paula Frazer. But the record’s heart is its hard-won positivity, especially on “Brimful of Asha,” their cult hit turned real one. That song takes the DNA of Britpop—fuzzy memories alchemized into pop gold—and rewrites it for a British-Indian boyhood, with references to playback singers Asha Bhosle and Lata Mangheskar, All-India Radio, and the UK reggae label Trojan Records. The Britpop party never felt more inclusive, or more joyous. –Tom Ewing

Listen: Cornershop: “Brimful of Asha”


Go! Discs

14.

The La’s: The La’s (1990)

The La’s’ eponymous debut and only album was several years ahead of the Britpop curve, arriving in the time of Madchester and raves. As such, The La’s serves as a bridge between the two eras. The songs are pure Beatles melodicism—you can almost see the Fab Four tapping out the opening number, “Son of a Gun,” during a relaxed moment in A Hard Day’s Night—mixed with the Kinks’ guitar riffs, notably on “I Can’t Sleep” and “Feelin’.” Oasis would later employ this combination to considerable commercial return.

However, as with the Stone Roses’ debut, there was something in the simple, hazy euphoria of songs like “There She Goes” and “Timeless Melody” that connected with the blissful possibility of the rave era, making the La’s both perfectly of the time and prescient of what was to come in British guitar music. Sadly, they wouldn’t be around to pick up the Britpop spoils, dissolving in a fit of frustrated perfectionism soon after, but the succinct pop mastery of their debut meant they were never far from Noel Gallagher’s thoughts as his band took Britpop to the world. –Ben Cardew

Listen: The La’s: “There She Goes”


Nude

13.

Suede: Suede (1993)

Suede’s arrival was a glass of cold water to the face of British guitar music. It wasn’t just that they were so radically different from everything else at the time—a riot of ripped cardigans, Bowie guitars, and fluid sexuality in a world of shoegazers—but they also came perfectly formed, spat defiant and blinking into the world. Suede found them full of swagger, filth, and an innate sense of drama, from the knowing squalor of “Animal Lover” to the airy desperation of “Sleeping Pills,” from the peacock pop strut of “Animal Nitrate” to the divine disgust of “Pantomime Horse.” Suede would later get weirder (Dog Man Star) and more overtly accessible (Coming Up), but their debut was the record that had it all, a dazzling mixture of pop smarts, experimental nous, and wickedly original thinking. Without Suede, Britpop would have been a far safer, easier, and more vapid proposition. –Ben Cardew

Listen: Suede: “Animal Lover”


Parlophone

12.

Supergrass: I Should Coco (1995)

In Britain, the phrase “I should Coco” is a sarcastic way of saying you agree with someone, but there was nothing to be petulant about when Supergrass emerged with this debut. Even today, you're hit by the shambolic, fat-free introduction to a trio who brought a punk edge to Britpop, taking their forebears (the Kinks, the Jam, Buzzcocks) and imposing three-chord hard noise while also glorifying how it felt to be young, liberated, and reckless. A few months later, when Oasis released their time-shifting (What’s the Story) Morning Glory?, they already looked positively past it.

The tracks’ guileless energy reflects their speed of recording, too. Most impressive of all is the fact that the six-minute, sprawling organ epic “Sofa (Of My Lethargy)” was done in just one take. The adolescent call-to-arms “Alright” was featured in Clueless and has become an insufficient tentpole for the Oxford band, who were drowning in far more eclectic ideas. From the acoustic dreaminess of “Time to Go” and the lightning-speed thrill of “Sitting Up Straight” to the Madness-like “Mansize Rooster” and the fantastical glam rock of “Strange Ones,” these three scamps painted pictures of life’s everyday mishaps and oddities while keeping listeners darting about on their toes. –Eve Barlow

Listen: Supergrass: “Sofa (Of My Lethargy)”


Island

11.

Pulp: His ‘N’ Hers (1994)

Jarvis Cocker was not meant to hold a guitar. To prowl the stage like an electrified stork, to rumble about tawdry sex artifacts like lipgloss and tight pink gloves and gleefully chronicle our animalistic impulses—he needed both hands free for that. Today, to watch Pulp’s set at Glastonbury 1994—an inauspicious midday slot, just one year before their conquering headlining gig—it feels quaint to see the Sheffield singer grip some wood and pick strings through the glorious “Babies,” stock-still save an emphatic kick or two. (Defying nature, he did reprise this during the reunion tour.)

By His ‘N’ Hers, Pulp had already been toiling for almost 20 years and three albums, with little to show for it, but they carried themselves in the studio like arena stars. Their thrillingly contradictory formula was honed: sexy and heady yet considered, shiny and singalong yet too clever to be cheap, with Cocker’s pleasantly barbed pathos anchoring tonic synth-pop. The dancefloor anthems (“Lipgloss,” “Razzamatazz,” “Do You Remember the First Time?”) were as bittersweet as the seeping mood studies (“Acrylic Afternoons,” “David’s Last Summer”) and then they capped it by lifting the chord progression of “I Will Survive” wholesale on “She’s a Lady.” Why not? They’d come this far. –Stacey Anderson

Listen: Pulp: “Babies”


Virgin / Hut

10.

The Verve: Urban Hymns (1997)

There are many albums on this list that speak to Britpop’s capacity for mordant wit, incisive social critique, and nuanced emotions. And then there’s Urban Hymns: pomp and circumstance personified, Be Here Now with a messianic complex instead of a coke habit. It begins with an orchestral sample that has cost the Verve millions, and the first lyric is Richard Ashcroft telling us the meaning of life. It doesn’t get any less modest going forward, but it would be the last time Ashcroft could back up his unwavering, deadly serious belief in his own profundity.

And Urban Hymns is something to behold: The power ballads (“The Drugs Don’t Work,” “Lucky Man”) would get laughed out of a folk-rock open mic if Ashcroft didn’t perform them like the most important love songs ever written, while generational anthems “Catching the Butterfly” and “The Rolling People” are utter nonsense elevated to the sublime thanks to his mojo-risin’ shamanism and Nick McCabe’s wah-wah pedals. Four years later, Bono would supply U2’s pull quote for a decade by claiming that they were “reapplying for the job of best band in the world,” but framing such a thing as an application process should’ve automatically disqualified them. As far as Urban Hymns was concerned, the Verve were the only band in the world. –Ian Cohen

Listen: The Verve: “The Drugs Don't Work”


Creation

9.

Oasis: Definitely Maybe (1994)

“Tonight I’m a rock‘n’roll star,” Liam Gallagher proclaims at the start of Oasis’ debut. Taken out of context, it’s easy to mistake this chorus as another example of braggadocio from Britpop’s brashest band—particularly given the anti-stadium-hero ethos of the era. But the verses of “Rock N’ Roll Star” tell a different story, reflecting Oasis’ modest circumstances when they made Definitely Maybe. Before Oasis were arrogant, they were aspirational: Throughout the album, Noel Gallagher writes about a dead-end, working class life from which there is no escape, save for fantasies of fame and fortune. In that same song, in a cutting whine pitched at the midpoint of John Lennon and Johnny Rotten, Liam Gallagher sings Definitely Maybe’s truest line: “In my mind/My dreams are real.” It was up to Oasis to make those dreams real.

Definitely Maybe became a generation-defining classic in the UK (and a beloved cult favorite among Anglophiles overseas) based on Noel Gallagher’s effortless ability to write rock anthems with simple, universal themes: the invincibility of youth (“Live Forever”), the undying allure of decadence (“Cigarettes & Alcohol”), and the desire for self-actualization (“Supersonic,” which is also about snorting Alka-Seltzer). Damon Albarn and Jarvis Cocker were wittier, perhaps, but Noel Gallagher spoke in a more primal language. His dreams were also the dreams of millions. –Steven Hyden

Listen: Oasis: “Supersonic”


EMI / Food

8.

Blur: Blur (1997)

Before their self-titled album, Blur were brilliant in a way that was also a little hard to look at—for American audiences, anyway, who preferred a slouch or an untucked shirt corner somewhere. But that all changed when Blur hit American shores in 1997, pulling its hair over its eyes and frowning theatrically. It was an audacious bid to reinvent the band as across-the-pond visitors to the then-exploding American indie rock scene, and it is also a gloriously confusing, fractured jumble, more a major-label mixtape than an album.

After the relatively conventional “Beetlebum,” Blur proceeds through a series of cartoon trapdoors, reeling from faux-grunge (“Song 2”) to faux-glam (“M.O.R.”) to ersatz Sebadoh tributes (“You’re So Great”) to high Noel Coward camp (“Death of a Party”). For Americans and Brits alike, the album was both perplexing and fascinating, like watching a movie through a Vaseline-smeared lens and being unable to tell if the actors are laughing or screaming. Blur’s relationship to American alt-rock—mocking it with “Song 2” while simultaneously scoring a bona fide hit—was also their relationship to success, as they scoffed at it and held it at arm’s length while zealously pursuing it. If you are truly going to be the smartest kids in the classroom, it’s not enough to scorn the test—you still have to ace it. –Jayson Greene

Listen: Blur: “Song 2”


Island

7.

Pulp: This Is Hardcore (1998)

Britpop often benefited square-peg acts, whose years of woodshedding gave them a golden opportunity when the mainstream’s round hole was busted open. By late 1995, a Ben Sherman shirt and mod bangs were pretty much all it took. But Pulp were something else. They’d formed in 1978, when the wide lapels and nylon that Jarvis Cocker took into every student union in Britain weren’t ironic, they were standard issue. If it took about 17 years for those planets to align, it only took three to repudiate everything that Pulp and Britpop had apparently stood for.

This Is Hardcore’s first single, “Help the Aged,” said it all—a dour celebration of decay that explodes into its chorus like overripe fruit. The band that had typified blind hope in the face of abject failure had seemingly, in success, found only defeat. That the sumptuous art rock of “This Is Hardcore” and “Dishes” were among Pulp’s best songs—as typically dyspeptic as anything on OK Computer, informed by Cocker’s disillusionment—was besides the point. This Is Hardcore told the faithful that the jig was up. In the bleak Bowie stomp of “Party Hard,” Cocker perfectly undermines Pulp’s cynical raison d’être: “If you didn't come to party, then why did you come here?” –Laura Snapes

Listen: Pulp: “Help the Aged”


Deceptive

6.

Elastica: Elastica (1995)

If Britpop’s essence was gleeful, irreverent insouciance in the face of dour American grunge, then Elastica were the Britpoppiest band of them all. Led by the impossibly fierce Justine Frischmann, this black-clad gang of three birds and one bloke banged out smart, deliciously catchy pop-punk songs about stuff like erectile dysfunction, car sex, and, um, lubrication. They shamelessly shoplifted riffs from Wire and the Stranglers, but turned them into tunes that were a thousand times more fun. Their debut album was 15 songs (plus one bonus track) in 40 minutes without an ounce of fat. They were the kind of band that makes people want to be in bands.

Frischmann was a Zelig-like figure in Britpop: A founding member of Suede and romantic partner to the frontman Brett Anderson, she left him for Damon Albarn, forming Cool Britannia’s First Couple. (At the peak of their powers, Elastica were far more successful in America than Blur.) Unfortunately, Frischmann’s relationship with Albarn, as well as with the other members of her band, imploded in “Behind the Music”-style fashion in the late 1990s, and Elastica’s 2000 sophomore album, The Menace, was met with indifference. But for a brief, shining moment, Elastica were the coolest band in Britain. –Amy Phillips

Listen: Elastica: “Connection”


Nude

5.

Suede: Dog Man Star (1994)

Suede’s Brett Anderson was Britpop’s first pin-up, baring his midriff and pouting coyly on the cover of Select’s April 1993 “Yanks Go Home!” issue—an anti-grunge salvo that championed the “crimplene, glamour, wit, and irony” of five young British bands. Just a year later, sinking into druggy oblivion and feuding with guitarist and co-songwriter Bernard Butler, Anderson grew alienated from the movement. Dog Man Star was the product of that isolation, a murky, maximalist symphony that overlaid the sex-drenched, council-estate sadscapes of Suede’s debut with visions of Old Hollywood glamour, as glimpsed from a distance of four decades and 5,500 miles. Still unfinished when Butler left the band, it was also a breakup album of sorts, its soaring arrangements battling melodramatic lyrics in an echo of the discord between its creators.

The standard criticism of Dog Man Star is that it’s too melodramatic to take seriously. Certainly, it has preposterous moments: the self-serious fairy tale “Black or Blue,” the swaggering condescension of “This Hollywood Life.” But excess was kind of the point with Suede, and this album captured their aesthetic at its most immersive. Black-and-white films haunt 1990s England on “Daddy’s Speeding,” about James Dean, and the hyper-romantic “The Wild Ones.” By the time the credits roll on “Still Life,” a Douglas Sirk weepy punctuated by hysterical strings, Suede have so persuasively sanctified everyday longing that even their overreaches sound purposeful. –Judy Berman

Listen: Suede: “The Wild Ones”


Big Brother

4.

Oasis: (What’s the Story) Morning Glory? (1995)

This was the people’s champ, the album that broadcast Britpop’s loving nostalgia, brash guitar worship, and rampant tunefulness further than any other. Admittedly, it is not the era’s smartest record, nor is it the coolest. But who needs smart or cool when you have Liam Gallagher sneering through a rock‘n’roll fantasyland bursting with wonderwalls, champagne supernovas, and enough maxed-out distortion to deserve a tinnitus warning? Who needs subtlety when you can listen to a man rhyme “say” and “day” over and over (and over) and make it sound like a bloody revolution?

But while (What’s the Story) Morning Glory? happily blares from the mountaintops, it also can’t help but glance at the abyss below. For all his arrogance, Noel Gallagher can be a surprisingly reflective songwriter, aware of the pitfalls of fame and drugs while simultaneously aiming for the top of the pops and hoovering cocaine. “Wonderwall” is an all-time ballad about being hesitant and inarticulate; the title track, with its helicopter chops and five-alarm riff, both actualizes and takes the piss out of coke-fueled mania. And “Champagne Supernova” serves as an excessive Britpop pinnacle as well as a eulogy for good times that can’t last. “Where were you while we were getting high?” Liam repeats endlessly at the end of the song, stretching out the memory as far as it could ever go. –Ryan Dombal

Listen: Oasis: “Champagne Supernova”


Parlophone

3.

Radiohead: The Bends (1995)

Radiohead were never a Britpop band, but on The Bends, they became the vent through which its subconscious fumed. As optimism swirled around Tony Blair’s ascent and the resurgent economy, 1995 saw Britpop fever erupt into a Dionysian free-for-all, with boozy shenanigans dominating tabloid headlines. To that, these Oxford oddballs issued their second album, a doomed cry from the party’s cellar. As they echoed Britpop’s disdain toward unchecked wealth, the pop-oriented album also undermined the movement, suspicious of both hedonism and Blair’s New Labour (which minted the left’s new pact with neoliberalism).

The Bends’ title track—with its histrionic cries of “I wanna be part of the human race!”—mopes in the mid-’90s zeitgeist’s shadow, mooring Britpop’s social theatricality in grunge’s grandiose alienation. That song, with its jibes at Radiohead’s ’60s-worshipping peers, rubs shoulders with radio-friendly ballads (see “High and Dry” and its tetchier sibling, “Fake Plastic Trees”) that anticipated the airbrushed post-Britpop rock of Coldplay and Travis. But the record’s integrity to the Britpop years lies in the way it challenged a jaded generation’s imagination. The unlikely breakout single was “Street Spirit (Fade Out),” which channels a sense of capitalist dread that even class-conscious Britpop artists repressed. And while the album found Radiohead in the jaws of a decade they hadn’t yet learned to outmaneuver, its epic portrayal of drift and disenchantment secures its reluctant spot in Britpop’s pantheon. –Jazz Monroe

Listen: Radiohead: “Street Spirit (Fade Out)”


Parlophone

2.

Blur: Parklife (1994)

Britpop moved indie guitar music from the UK’s margins to the mainstream with remarkable speed. Parklife was the catalyst—a colorful, pop-centric palette of great scope and eclecticism, effectively launched with a disco song (“Girls & Boys”). Subsequent singles were an elegant French-kissed breakup song (“To the End”), the anthemic title track, and a hand-wringing over encroaching age and domesticity (“End of a Century”). Blur had hinted at such depth and variety, but Parklife found them with new ambition and confidence. Even the record’s understated gems (“This Is a Low,” “Badhead,” “Clover Over Dover”) carry a lived-in sense of belief miles away from the group’s baggy roots.

Blur had explored notions of Britishness on their previous album, Modern Life Is Rubbish, but they made it a thesis statement on Parklife, giving both a clear narrative and an all-important rooting factor to what would become Britpop. Synthesizing an emergent sense of national pride with youthful anger and a satirical eye, Blur built bridges from art schools and indie dances to the mainstream, in much the same way Nirvana’s Nevermind did for punk-rooted music a few years earlier. Indeed, the death of Nirvana’s Kurt Cobain, just weeks before the release of Parklife, underlined the feeling that the epicenter of credible guitar music was shifting from the U.S. to the UK.

In the short term, Britpop was a Parklife-built world, and it provided paths to the charts for such outsiders as Super Furry Animals, Pulp, and Elastica. By 1996, Oasis would become so commercially dominant that Britpop’s original sense of glamour, wit, and artifice were replaced by more conservative, lumpen impulses. The line at the time was that Blur won the Battle of Britpop but Oasis won the war. Twenty years later, it feels clear who, creatively, got the better of whom. –Scott Plagenhoef

Listen: Blur: “Girls and Boys”


Island

1.

Pulp: Different Class (1995)

Britpop had a remarkable power to turn complex personalities into cartoons. Jarvis Cocker, more than most, conspired in his own caricature, perhaps reasoning that after several years of frustration and anonymity, he wasn’t going to take any chances. Take “Common People,” a song in which cute social comedy escalates into seething insecurity and omnidirectional rage. The radio edit snipped the most vicious lines, in which Cocker is a dog who will “tear your insides out,” while its brash, playful video reduced it to Carry On Class War. That’s Different Class’ Trojan horse strategy in a nutshell: Come for the fun, stay for the psychodrama.

Coming hard on the heels of His ‘N’ Hers, Different Class seized the moment with slavering jaws; “Common People” and a momentous Glastonbury performance duly fast-tracked Cocker to national treasure status. Camp and gangly in thrift-store chic, this uncommon pop star seemed to embody Britpop’s core narrative of the underdogs taking over without shedding his lifelong sense of unbelonging. Even when he’s a participant, he’s a voyeur at heart, stranded on the threshold of wherever he is. In his ambivalent rave memoir “Sorted for E’s & Wizz,” he’s the guy wondering why he’s not having as much fun as everyone else.

The central themes of Different Class are sex and class, both characterized by mess, discomfort, longing, and revenge. Panting and yelping, Cocker describes the emptiness of too many partners (“Underwear”), not enough (“Live Bed Show”), and unrequited lust for one in particular (“Disco 2000”). The songs about class identity tell a similar story. The hungry autodidact’s fantasies of transcending the brutal conformity of working-class Sheffield hit the wall with “Common People,” where the gilded Greek art student is the catalyst, not the subject; her crime is to remind him that he can’t leave it behind and, thus, to make him feel ashamed for wanting to. In “I Spy”—a torrid mind-meld of Serge Gainsbourg, “First We Take Manhattan,” and Mike Leigh’s Naked—the thwarted interloper becomes the vengeful seducer, despoiling the privileged milieu that enthralls and disgusts him. His different class is a class of one, and it gets lonely there.

With the sole exception of “Something Changed,” Different Class is never purely joyous, yet it sounds like a celebration throughout. Seasoned producer Chris Thomas (Sex Pistols, Roxy Music) conspired with the six band members to assimilate a lifetime of British pop, from glam-rock and torch songs to synth-pop and Two Tone, and render Pulp’s distinctive tawdry glamour huge and unstoppable. What’s more, Cocker has the knack, like a classic British sitcom, of making anguish hilarious.

Different Class thus epitomizes Britpop’s signature blend of surface jollity with undercurrents of anxiety, representing both the club and the bedsit, art school and “Top of the Pops,” community and isolation, the party and the comedown, victory and defeat, pleasure and the price of pleasure. It’s good because it throbs with the desire to transform and escape; it’s great because it knows what happens when you get what you think you wanted. –Dorian Lynskey

Listen: Pulp: “Common People”


1. James Dean Bradfield 2. Jacqui Blake 3. Carrie Askew 4. Louise Wener 5. Luke Haines 6. Norman Blake 7. Sonya Madan 8. Darren Hayman 9. Miki Berenyi 10. Martin Rossiter 11. Cerys Matthews 12. Tjinder Singh 13. Jools Holland 14. Lauren Laverne 15. Brett Anderson 16. Brian Molko 17-18. Pulp’s showgirls (“This is Hardcore” video) 19. John Peel 20. Begbie (Trainspotting) 21. Sick Boy (Trainspotting) 22. Spud (Trainspotting) 23. Renton (Trainspotting) 24. Gaz Coombes 25. Sadie Frost (“Common People” video) 26. Sarah Cracknell 27. Lee Mavers 28. Damien Hirst 29. Oasis’ dummy (“Wonderwall” video) 30. Oasis’ clown (“Wonderwall” video) 31. Tony Blair 32. Richard Ashcroft 33. Thom Yorke 34. Jonny Greenwood 35. Danny Boyle 36. Noel Gallagher 37. Liam Gallagher 38. Graham Coxon 39. Jarvis Cocker 40. Candida Doyle 41. Damon Albarn 42. Justine Frischmann 43. Kate Moss 44. Blur’s milk carton (“Coffee & TV” video) 45. Super Furry Animals’ raccoon


Contributors: Stacey Anderson, Eve Barlow, Judy Berman, Stuart Berman, Ben Cardew, Ian Cohen, Ryan Dombal, Elia Einhorn, Stephen Thomas Erlewine, Tom Ewing, Simon Goddard, Jayson Greene, Steven Hyden, Dorian Lynskey, Jill Mapes, Jazz Monroe, Amy Phillips, Scott Plagenhoef, Ryan Schreiber, Laura Snapes